After Sandy, Monmouth Beach still dealing with messy cleanup

MONMOUTH BEACH — Nearly two years after Hurricane Sandy barreled through the Jersey Shore, towns are trying hard to eliminate evidence of the storm’s destruction.

But confusion over who has jurisdiction over stray sand – coupled with the untimely presence of a small shore bird – has a stretch of Route 36 in Monmouth Beach looking as if Sandy rolled through only recently.

So the sand still sits on a slice of the road the length of a football field. A few feet high in spots, it’s been there so long that large stalks of vegetation are growing out of its mounds. It forces joggers and bicyclists onto the shoulder of the road closer to traffic.

Monmouth Beach Mayor Susan Howard said the state Department of Transportation plowed sand off the highway immediately after Sandy by dumping the sand on the east side of the sea wall.

But the DOT made the piles so high, she said, that the sand blew back over the wall and accumulated on the sidewalk, referred to as the splash pad, she said.

The town asked the DOT to clean it up again but their request got nowhere. Howard said. The DOT told them it would be the responsibility of the town or the county, she said.

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Steve Schapiro, a DOT spokesman, said that after Sandy, agency workers and independent contractors removed sand from Route 36, cleaned it, and put it back on the beach. Because the state does not own or maintain the splash pad, it’s the responsibility of the county or Monmouth Beach to keep it clean, he said.

“NJDOT maintains Route 36 from curb to curb and it is not uncommon for NJDOT crews to remove sand and other debris from the roadway and move it to a department facility,” Schapiro said. “NJDOT has done so several times both before and since Sandy.”

When it came time for cleanup, another state agency stepped in to stop the work. The state Department of Environmental Protection wouldn’t allow the sand to be touched because of the presence of piping plovers, a federal- and state- protected bird.

Larry Hajna, a DEP spokesman, said that during last summer’s major post-Sandy cleanup effort, about 100 yards of the sidewalk wasn’t cleaned of sand left over from the storm.

He said a pair of piping plovers this season built a nest on top of the sea wall in the area of the sand.

“Sand removal work could not be done because the sand is right below the nest,” Hajna said. “The sand will be able to be cleaned up in August when the limit on activity around nest sites is lifted.”